1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a telephone system, and more particularly, relates to a telephone system with automatic dialing using infrared transmission from an electronic pocketbook.
2. Related Art
Conventional electronic pocketbooks as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,117,542 for Electronic Pocket Directory issued to Klausner, U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,905 for Pocket Data Receiver With Full Page Visual Display issued to Wells, U.S. Pat. No. 5,150,293 for Small Electronic Memo Data Storage, Display And Recall Apparatus issued to Murata, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,526,424 for Electronic Notepad issued to Karnowski, are organized to feature a visual display, computer linking and a host of communication options and expandability, including touch screen display, word processor, calendar, scheduler, telephone directory and the like. Generally, telephone number registered in the electronic pocketbook must be manually retrieved by the user before the user can approach a telephone system and manually dial the telephone number of an interested person registered in the electronic pocketbook. Alternatively, the telephone number as registered in an electronic note disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,035 for Electronic Apparatus issued to Oba et al, may be transmitted in a form of a dial tone signal to a telephone microphone in order to save the user the hassle of having to manually dial the telephone number registered in the electronic note at the telephone system. It is still inconvenient for the user to confirm the telephone number registered in the electronic pocketbook for automatic dialing purposes.
While conventional telephone systems such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,506,895 for Telephone Apparatus With Automatic Dialing Function issued to Hirai et al., are widely organized to perform an automatic dialing function by way of, for example, optical scanning of telephone numbers from printed materials such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,975,948 for Rapid Dialing Method For Telecommunications issued to Andresen et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,654 for Automatic Telephone Dialer System With Printed Storage issued to Kelley et al., or by way of voice recognition as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,504,805 for Calling Number Identification Using Speech Recognition issued to Lee, or by way of body heat or infrared rays irradiated from a person as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,319 for Telephone Apparatus issued to Satoh et al., there is no convenient and effective way to link the electronic pocketbook with the telephone system which allows the user to automatically dial a telephone number at the telephone system under control of operation from the electronic pocketbook.